KAREN HUMPHRIES SALLICK (Tibetan Buddhist Practitioner): The mandala is a teaching and meditation tool so that we can focus on evoking in ourselves the Buddha nature that we Buddhists believe you have inside you.

A sand mandala is made typically from precious stones that have been hand-ground and then hand-dyed. The sand goes in a funnel. They’ll rub it and the sand will come out. That’s how they put these layers of sand down to create these beautiful, spiritual forms of art.

One can use the mandala as an aid to meditation helping you through the process of eliminating emotions that are unhelpful to you so that you can then uncover and evoke what’s in the center.

There are thousands of mandalas, and, in fact, even for one type of mandala there are several ways to do it, depending on how much time the monks have. You can take five days. You can take a month to build a mandala. Every aspect of the mandala has meaning.

The very center is the representation of Chenrezig, the Buddha of compassion. Tibetan Buddhists actually believe that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of Chenrezig.

The next ring outside of the central figure of compassion are representations of four different Buddhas. The Buddha for eliminating hatred is represented by a thunderbolt. Then we have a jewel that represents the deity that can eliminate suffering. Then we have a wheel of knowledge or dharma, the deity that represents the elimination of ignorance. And then the last is a green sword that cuts through jealousy.

The next circle are lotus leaves. If you’ve ever seen a statue of a Buddha, they are often sitting on a lotus flower, so the family of Buddhas that are represented in the center are sitting in a ring of lotus.

Then outside of that is the vadra ring of protection from negative thoughts.

Finally, in the very outside ring — fire, and that fire is to burn through ignorance to enlightenment.

The dissolution is actually a very important part of the mandala process, because it really is showing the nature of impermanence. As Westerners, we get so attached to things. So here’s this beautiful mandala that these monks have worked five days on. And, with no emotion whatsoever, they reach their hand into the middle and just mess it up. And then they’ll sweep it up with brushes, and they’ll place it into a vase.

The mandala will be brought to the water. The deities in the mandala will then go into the water as a blessing, back to the Earth.

The Tibetans believe that anyone who watches the building and dissolution of a mandala actually accumulates merit and can begin to evoke that Buddha nature, being the most compassionate we can be.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2009/10/thumb1.jpgMonks from the Dalai Lama’s private monastery in India spent five days building a sand mandala at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. The mandala is a symbolic structure that represents a Buddha’s dwelling. It is said to bring peace and harmony to the area where it is being made. Karen Humphries Sallick, who organized the monks’ tour, explains.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/07/08/october-12-2007-tibetan-buddhist-mandala/4423/feed/1Buddhism,Dalai Lama,Monks,Sand Mandala,TibetMonks from the Dalai Lama's private monastery in India spent five days building a sand mandala at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. The mandala is a symbolic structure that represents a Buddha's dwelling.Monks from the Dalai Lama's private monastery in India spent five days building a sand mandala at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. The mandala is a symbolic structure that represents a Buddha's dwelling. It is said to bring peace and harmony to the area where it is being made. Karen Humphries Sallick, who organized the monks' tour, explains.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno3:27 Buddha Gardenhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/06/17/june-17-2011-buddha-garden/9001/
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LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It has been described as a piece of heaven on earth, tucked in the foothills of the glacier topped Mission Mountains in northwestern Montana, a place where cows and farmers manicure the green grass. It is not a place you would expect to see a 24-foot-tall Buddhist statue of Yum Chenmo, the Great Mother of Wisdom and Compassion—certainly not in a land that has been sacred to Native Americans for centuries.

STEPHEN LOZAR: This is where we live. This is where we were born and where the bones of our ancestors reside, so this is our home.

SEVERSON: Steve Lozar is a council leader for the Salish Tribe. Julie Cajune heads the Center for American Indian Policy at the Salish Kootenai College.

JULIE CAJUNE: The land around us, you know, is part of our creation story. The geography, the place names go back to our creation stories when coyote and fox went through this area and got this place ready for human beings.

SEVERSON: One of those human beings turned out to be Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche, the highly respected Tibetan lama who says he saw this exact place in a dream when he was eight years old in Tibet.

TRANSLATOR FOR TULKU SANG-NGAG RINPOCHE: And he says when he came here to this very site – little bit that site also – he says there was such an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, and it was as if he had seen it before, as if he had really known this place, and he talked to his acquaintance about it, and of course they convinced him that he had never been here before. Then he realized that this was the exact visualization that he had of America when he was a child.

SEVERSON: So this is where Rinpoche supporters bought a 60-acre sheep ranch. It’s inside the confederated Salish-Kootenai-Ponderai Reservation. Because of a unusual hundred-year-old federal law, non-natives can acquire land within the reservation. Guided by his vision, the Rinpoche determined that this was where he should build a Garden of 1000 Buddhas to promote world peace.

Workers have been busy casting Buddhas for months, but it’s a slow process, and each Buddha must be perfect before it’s blessed.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: This is the spine of the statue which has been cast. All these are scrolls which contain sacred Tibetan power syllables or mantras all with healing prayer, all that goes right in the cast.

SEVERSON: Sitting in this old barn are hundreds of Buddhas waiting to make their grand entrance.

The site is still under construction, but when it’s completed it will resemble the shape of a dharma wheel, which symbolizes the basic teachings of Buddha. At the center of the eight spokes is the statue of the Great Mother packed inside with sacred texts. But before the Rinpoche did anything, he wanted to make sure the garden of Buddhas was acceptable to the tribes.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: And so he extended his hand to the tribal elders to come and bless the land.

SEVERSON: Dan Decker is the lead attorney for the Salish Tribe.

DAN DECKER: And they didn’t come to the reservation saying you have to think like we do, which has been our history. Our history has been that newcomers come in, want us to welcome them, and then immediately tell us how we need to think. That’s not the experience here. The experience is “share with us.”

LOZAR: I actually was so excited I yelled out in the tribal council meeting, I think it’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-cultural associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land. I can’t think of better possibility for neighbors.

SEVERSON:It turns out that Tibetan Buddhists and Native Americans have quite a lot in common.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: He gets a sense that, you know, there are similarities in our experience as oppressed people. He understands that once these particular areas were numerous with the natives, and their numbers have dwindled so much so that now they’re in the minority—a similar situation we may be facing in Tibet also.

SEVERSON: In Tibet, the Rinpoche was revered as the sixth incarnation of one of the great Buddhist teachers. He was imprisoned for nine hard years, and he says he was tortured. His prominence did not sit well with the Chinese.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: That’s what got him into trouble, because he says, from the Chinese perspective, number one they look upon religion as poison, something that is totally undesirable, and so if you were a religious person it’s almost the same as if you were like a drug peddler or somebody wh’os peddling something really terrible.

CAJUNE: Another thing that we share with the Dali Lama and the Tibetan people is nonviolent resistance, and if you knew the history of our people, we have really been engaged in nonviolent resistance for hundreds of years. We’re still engaged in nonviolent resistance.

SEVERSON: They also discovered a shared belief, that all natural things—the earth, trees, animals—have spirits dwelling within them.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: In the Tibetan tradition, suppose you were embarking on a journey, and you saw an eagle overhead. You would celebrate, and you would look upon it as a good omen, that success is on the way, and he was amazed that the Native Indians have such a similar belief.

SEVERSON: Now they share another tradition, an annual peace festival at a time when peace seems almost unattainable. Originally the Rinpoche planned to put a statue of Buddha at the center of the wheel, but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, he decided instead to build a statue of the Great Mother with guns and swords buried underneath, symbolizing the victory of peace over violence.

TRANSLATOR FOR RINPOCHE: He sensed that 9/11 may have planted a seed of conflict, enmity, hatred, and according to the scriptures, and according to his religious training, the Great Mother has that unique blessing to bring about peace, to reduce conflict.

SEVERSON: And so now they dine together and share a dream that the Buddha garden will one day contribute to peace.

CAJUNE: There’s that old saying that says never underestimate what a single act of integrity can accomplish, and I really believe that that is what Rinpoche has done here. Something very good is going to come from it.

SEVERSON: The Rinpoche says the Garden of 1000 Buddhas will be ready for visitors by 2014 and that the Dalai Lama has agreed to personally consecrate it.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/06/thumb02-buddhagarden.jpg“It’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-cultural associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land,” says Steve Lozar, a council leader of the Salish Tribe in Montana.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2011/06/17/june-17-2011-buddha-garden/9001/feed/13Buddhism,Dalai Lama,Interfaith,Montana,multicultural,Native Americans,peace,September 11,spiritual gardens,Tibet,Tibetan Buddhists,Tulku Sang-Ngag Rinpoche“It’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-culture associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land,” says Steve Lozar, a council leader of the Salish Tribe in Montana.“It’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-culture associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land,” says Steve Lozar, a council leader of the Salish Tribe in Montana.Religion & Ethics NewsWeeklyno6:54 Karmapa Lamahttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2008/07/11/july-11-2008-karmapa-lama/36/
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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Dalai Lama is now here in the US for nearly a month of teaching across the country. He is the world’s best-known representative of Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps of all Buddhism. But now another potential Buddhist leader is emerging. The Dalai Lama, who turned 73 last Sunday, leads one of the four schools or denominations within Tibetan Buddhism. The 23-year-old Karmapa Lama leads another. His supporters believe he may one day succeed the older man as Buddhism’s leading international voice. Recently the Karmapa visited the US for the first time, and Kim Lawton talked with him.

KIM LAWTON: They call him a reincarnation of the living Buddha, and this young spiritual leader is already on his way to international superstar status. His name is Ogyen Trinley Dorje. His title is the 17th Karmapa Lama, and after the Dalai Lama he’s now Tibetan Buddhism’s second-highest ranking spiritual leader. During a recent visit to the US, his first introduction to the West, thousands came out to venues from New York to Seattle to see the 23-year-old Buddhist master.

DZOCHEN PONLOP RINPOCHE (Narlanda West Buddhist Center): The young Kamarpa is the most powerful Buddhist meditation teacher. His scholarship is excellent, and also his youth and his presence makes a profound impact.

LAWTON: The term “karmapa” literally means the embodiment of all the activities of the Buddhas. For the last nearly 1,000 years, a Karmapa Lama has led the Kagyu tradition within Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhists believe enlightened spiritual masters can choose to be reincarnated in order to come back and help others achieve enlightenment. This Karmapa’s followers see him as part of an unbroken line of Buddhist wisdom.

LAMA SURYA DAS (Western Buddhist Teachers Network): He feels very close to us from the last life and through all of our good aspirations and good things that we have been trying to do together to help bring peace and sanity and wisdom and love into this very volatile modern world.

LAWTON: In an exclusive American television interview, the Karmapa told me he’s pleased with how Buddhism has taken hold in the US.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): Americans have taken a great interest in Buddhism and many Americans have put forth a lot of energy in order to propagate the teachings of Buddhism, and I think they have achieved excellent results within this short period of time.

LAWTON: The Karmapa’s international acclaim is enhanced by the dramatic story that surrounds him. He was born in 1985 to a family of nomads in eastern Tibet. When he was eight years old, he was identified as fulfilling the prophecy left by the previous Karmapa who had died in 1981. The Dalai Lama had a dream which confirmed the recognition of the new Karmapa, and Dorje was taken to live in a monastery. Although some rivals support a different Karmapa, Dorje is the only high lama to have been officially recognized by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. But China keeps a tight reign on Buddhism in Tibet, and when he was 14 Dorje snuck out of his monastery and made a secret escape across the Himalayas by foot, horseback, taxi, and train. Eight days later, he arrived in Dharamsala, India, headquarters of the Dalai Lama, where he has spent the past several years in study and meditation. As the heads of two different streams within Tibetan Buddhism, Karmapas and Dalai Lamas have historically been rivals. That has now changed.

SURYA DAS: This Kamarpa 17th is very close to the Dalai Lama and lives in Dharamsala, and they’re like this. So there is no sectarian rivalry or anything. They’re very much close together.

LAWTON: That closeness has led many to suggest that the Dalai Lama, now 73, is grooming the Karmapa as his spiritual heir and the next international voice of Buddhism. It’s a suggestion the Karmapa doesn’t shy away from.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): I have no special plans to take over any specific role after whenever it is that His Holiness the Dali Lama passes away. However, I would be delighted to serve in accordance with the level of confidence and trust the people had in me. It does seem to be the case that I am receiving more and more recognition in the world, and my main aspiration is that I use this recognition for a beneficial purpose.

LAWTON: Because the Dalai Lama heads the Tibetan government-in-exile, there is much speculation about the Karmapa’s potential role in China-Tibet politics as well. He avoided such sensitive topics during his visit to the US, and steered questions about politics back to the practice of Buddhism in Tibet.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (teaching, through translator): It’s important to understand that cherishing sentient beings, loving sentient beings is really the root of compassion.

LAWTON: As his public role now expands, expectations about his future leadership are high. With his trip to the US, the teachings he once gave to private audiences at his monastery are being sold on DVDs and posted on the Internet.

PONLOP RINPOCHE: I’m not talking politics but from spiritual point of view. You know, he is like a spiritual king. Naturally he has that presence, he has that command.

LAWTON: The Karmapa is learning English, although not yet confident enough to teach or give an interview in the language. But a few words trickle through.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (speaking English): I need dictionary.

LAWTON: He can come across as uncomfortable, reserved, even stern. Yet there are flashes of humor, too.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (speaking English): I forget the translator.

LAWTON: It’s easy to forget he’s only 23. During one Seattle appearance, he mentioned that he used to like reading X-Men comic books, but then people stopped giving them to him. So we got him one. In many ways, he’s been isolated, his responsibilities pressed upon him since he was a small child.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (teaching through a translator): And I would think thoughts like, why are my attendants who are disciples of the Karmapa making my life so miserable? Why are they locking me in a box and putting on the lid?

LAWTON: Followers say this Karmapa is well aware that technology has made the world a smaller place and that Buddhism must stay relevant.

GYALWANG KARMAPA (through translator): Because of the Internet, we live in an age in which information can travel very rapidly to different places. Before, it used to be the case that just having a Karmapa alive was good enough for everyone. People didn’t need a lot of information about who the Karmapa was or what the Karmapa was doing.

SURYA DAS: He has continuously talked about not holding on to things just because they’re old, but to adapt, and keep the essence, but to adapt to new times and places.

LAWTON: This Karmapa believes that Eastern Buddhists and Western Buddhists can learn from one another.

LAWTON: Given the level of devotion he’s already cultivating in the West, his followers say this Karmapa Lama may well be the future face of Buddhism around the world.

I’m Kim Lawton in Seattle.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2008/09/re_thumb_profile_karmapa.jpgThe Dalai Lama leads one of the four schools, or denominations within Tibetan Buddhism. The 23-year-old Karmapa Lama leads another. His supporters believe he may one day succeed the older man as Buddhism’s leading international voice.

]]>Read more of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly interview with Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese history and philosophy and Confucian studies at Harvard University:

Q: What is the core message of your recent speech about the Dalai Lama and Tibet?

A: I think it’s important to make a distinction between the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan independence movement and also to understand the Dalai Lama from a more religious perspective than simply a political perspective. It’s important for China to become religiously musical and also concerned about identity politics. So in the long term perspective there is a great deal of space for communication and negotiation and of course on the side of the Dalai Lama the possibility of allowing both the Dharmsala radicals to express themselves but also to distance himself from some of the so-called rioters.

Q: What has been the impact of the recent Tibetan protests inside Tibet and inside China?

A: I think in a way [it has been] unprecedented, but in the long run I hope some reconciliation can be worked out. From the Tibetan side, of course, 50 years of Dalai Lama’s exile provided an opportunity for the Tibetans to rethink about their situation and because of the young Tibetans, the so-called Youth Council, their position in a way is not identical to the Dalai Lama’s position. I think the Dalai Lama makes this very explicit on a number of occasions, that he is searching for autonomy and hopefully with an emphasis on culture, whereas the young Tibetans are more interested in independence, separating from China. China because of her involvement with the Olympics wanted to present a peaceful, harmonious image, and the Tibetan situation has fundamentally challenged that. That’s not only the position of the government, but I think the intellectual community and the general people as a whole, and that’s the reason why the situation becomes very explosive.

Q: Does the Chinese government really believe, as they say, that the Dalai Lama is behind the protests?

A: The Chinese government is not at all informed about the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader. They always perceive him as a political leader interested in mobilizing anti-Chinese forces outside of China, not only the United States but in Europe and even in Japan and other places. My sense it’s a misperception that needs to be corrected.

Q: The current president of China, Hu Jintao, oversaw Tibet and a harsh crackdown on it in 1989. Shouldn’t he know about Tibetan culture and religion?

A: China, before the open reform policy, had gone through radical transformations every 5 years, so the sense of restlessness, the sense of the importance of stability is very pronounced. Any challenge to that particular sense of stability would be considered as a major threat. On the other hand, precisely because Chinese leaders have been overwhelmed by modernization, development, I would say a form of scientism, the leadership has very little understanding of religion, especially of religion in the 21st century, and they are also not very sensitive to what may be called identity politics. So it’s not just Tibet, but also the whole question of the non-Chinese speaking Muslim community, the so-called Eastern Turkestan issues. So they look at it in a broader perspective. They are deeply worried about the question of sovereignty being compromised because of this particular challenge.

Q: Robert Thurman says that prior to China’s 1959 invasion the Tibetans had turned their swords into plowshares and were a peaceful people. The Chinese say they see Tibet as part of their country. What is the reality as you see it?

A: I think from the Chinese point of view ever since the Opium War in the mid-nineteenth century, every ten-year period there is major change. Chinese sovereignty was totally overwhelmed by Western powers. So this sense of trying to make China an integrated nation was very strong not just in People’s Republic of China, but I would call Chinese diaspora or cultural China broadly defined. There’s no question about the fact that after Tibetans had become very much in the tradition Tibetan Buddhistan, they became peaceful and the situation happened recently and the Chinese so much concern about the harmonious society of the whole nation believes that any sort of challenges especially linked to the outside world would be too threatening for their stability. I think that’s a misconception. The Chinese even mentioned, some scholars mentioned about the danger of “Khomeni Phenomenon,” for example, if the Dalai Lama returns to Tibet, Lhasa in particular … the situation may be uncontrollable. But on the other hand I think it is highly desirable for the Dalai Lama to return to China, maybe to go to a sacred mountain, a kind of Buddhist pilgrimage, and on his return give a [press] conference in Beijing to make his own position very explicit. Then of course the Chinese government can also organize a press conference to state their own position. So with that kind of communication, I think the possibility of some settlement very good. So far there have been about six or seven direct communications, but on the Chinese side it is run by the so-called United Front. People are very acutely aware of political issues, and these people are not particularly sensitive to religion, and no religious leaders are being involved in this kind of negotiation. There’s also a misconception of Dharmsala and their concern for independence as being very firm, and that’s the conflict.

Q: Historically was Tibet already part of China or did it become part of China in the 1950s?

A: Sovereignty was an issue that didn’t emerge in China before it became important in the nineteenth century, so China was a great civilization that became a nation, or struggling to be a nation, since the nineteenth century. So the question of whether Tibet is an integral part of China from the point of sovereignty didn’t even occur before the nineteenth century, but Tibet has been very closely linked to China and has been in communication with the Chinese leaders probably for centuries. And China claimed that Tibet is an integral part of China, not in terms of sovereignty but in terms of cultural interaction and in terms of the power of China in the political sense that in a way embraced the Tibetan region. But from the Tibetan point of view the cultural differences have been very great. At the same time there are religious differences, not to mention ethnic differences, so the sense that Tibet is independent from a cultural point of view has a great deal of merit as well.

Q: You have mentioned the importance of stability to China and the fact that there is little understanding of religion among Chinese leaders. Is religion seen as an attack on stability?

A: They are actually learning. Right now there is a very strong sense religions — such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and of course Taoism and so forth — can be important stabilizing force of this society, allow the people to search for certain kind of spiritual sanctuary so they would be able to collaborate with this enterprise, I would say “joint venture,” to make China peaceful, the so-called peaceful development actually is accepted by everyone.

Q: Tibetans say the Chinese improvements and modernization of Tibet dilute their culture and religion. Is there some truth to that?

A: I certainly think from the perspective of the Dalai Lama and many Tibetan intellectuals and Tibetan people in general that is the case. On the other hand, I think the truth of the matter is China believes that in the last few decades the government has contributed significantly to Tibetan growth in terms of economic growth, in terms of building roads and so forth. But from the Tibetan point of view, if cultural identity is not respected, if Tibetan culture, especially religious practice, is not fully understood then even this modernization in material terms may not be particularly welcomed. I think recently one of the major problems is the government’s intention to educate the Tibetans. They tried to promote patriotism or patriotic education among all these temples, so the monks became very resentful of this kind of imposition of ideology and, you may say, even cultural chauvinism. So I think it’s important for the government to be very sensitive to the Tibetan sense of self-understanding and self-identification. It is extremely difficult for Chinese from Beijing and other places to settle down in Tibet, and very few of them managed to do that. Hu Jintao, for example, was in control of the area, but he stayed most of the time in Sichuan and other places rather than Tibetan plateau, because it’s very difficult for anyone to settle down there for an extended period of time.

Q: Because of the altitude?

A: Because of the altitude, yes. So many Chinese that went to Tibet, either traders or merchants, they had a very specific interest in Tibet either from the commercial or political point of view, I think most of them — their appreciation of Tibetan culture is I would say outmoded because this very strong scientific ideology, the assumption that human history progressed from religion to metaphysics to science and rationality, a very limited sense of rationality — I call it instrumental rationalilty. As a result the Tibetans feel that they are humiliated, they are ignored, they are marginalized, because people don’t understand why they are so devoted to religion, to the Dalai Lama. Their devotion sometimes is wrongly perceived as a kind of superstition that should be overcome by modernization, by progress, right now by the market economy. But I think it’s important also to note that Tibet, like all parts of China, and to a certain extent East Asia as a whole, this has been very much “marketized,” so the younger people do not have a very strong sense of their cultural heritage or their religious identity. That’s true with all parts of China. Materialism, progressivism, scientism, instrumentalism all become powerful forces in threatening [what has been] a great cultural tradition, religious tradition, for centuries.

Q: The Dalai Lama has accused China of waging religious and cultural genocide in Tibet, destroyed monasteries, imprisoning monks, forcing monks to denounce him. Has this been happening in China’s patriotic education programs?

A: It’s been happening, but I think the idea of forced migration and arresting monks and so forth sometimes may be exaggerated. On the other hand, because of this tension and conflict between the Chinese perception, Beijing’s perception of what Tibet ought to be and many Tibetans, spiritual leaders and people in general, what they would like to be, that conflict is very strong, and when the conflict leads to confrontation often the reaction of Beijing is very strong and that provoked a counter reaction from the monks. I think that’s, to me, very unfortunate. It’s been going on for some time, and I think a long-term resolution would have to be made, and some kind of mutual understanding is necessary. Direct political negotiation is important, but cultural interchange and understanding in the long run would be more important.

Q: As the Chinese leadership becomes younger will they be more open and not so afraid of Tibetan culture and religion?

A: Yes, my sense is that if China begins to understand her own religious traditions — Buddhism, Taoism, even the spiritual side of Confucianism, for example — if they take India absolutely seriously as a reference culture, then China would mature in the sense to understand the positive aspects of religion, and now I think they must have learned the lesson: inability to understand religion can turn out to be very costly in terms of their diplomacy, public image, or political activity, both inside and abroad. So I think in the long run the possibility of mutual understanding is really there, but in the short run the situation is not only very dangerous, the situation to me is very depressing, precisely because misconception, misunderstanding will persist. I think China should take the lead to try to change and improve the Chinese mentality in understanding not just Tibet but all the minority groups and of course the whole question about how religion in general can be a harmonizing and stabilizing force.

Q: What will happen when the Dalai Lama is no longer on the scene? Could there be much more violence, since up to now he has been keeping a lid on the younger Tibetans?

A: I totally agree. I was deeply worried when I was in China that not just the government officials [but] some intellectuals believe that if Dalai Lama fades from the scene the problem will be resolved. My sense is the Dalai Lama has played a very important role in the peaceful transformation of Tibet, outside of China, and also the possibility of mutual understanding, and he is a key factor for the resolution, that China should seize that opportunity. I met him a few times and I think he even made rather explicit the idea that he wanted to withdraw from politics and to become a spiritual leader exclusively. From the Chinese point of view it is very important to take advantage of the effectiveness of the Dalai Lama, not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the political realm, to come to terms with the rapid and even explosive change of the Tibetan communities not only in China, but outside of China. So I agree with you. If the misunderstanding persists, if Dalai Lama fades from the scene, the situation will be uncontrollable. It will be more than 10 or 100 Falun Gong situation. Of course, we also cherish the hope that the situation will not occur, but the danger is always there. I think the Chinese government should be critically aware of this.

Q: Do you have any idea where the Panchen Lama [the second highest ranking Lama after the Dalai Lama] is?

A: I have no idea, but I am really disappointed that misunderstanding occurred, because originally the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government identified the same person. Unfortunately, the Chinese perception, once that news was announced first before China announced it, [led to] total misunderstanding of the situation. Now we have presumably two Panchen Lamas, and I think most of the people outside of China would consider the real Panchen Lama is now in prison, one of the youngest political prisoners. I think that issue needs to be openly discussed. Of course, there is also the radical situation, the Dalai Lama actually mentioned it, that whole system of the Dalai Lama maybe in danger, because that system from the deep political sense is a collaboration between Tibet on the one hand and Beijing on the other. If that relationship is severed, then certainly there will be no real relationship politically between Beijing and Lhasa.

Q: The Tibetan protests seemed to demonstrate that the average Chinese looks at the Dalai Lama as a rather evil, sinister character.

A: This is in the broader context, because the Olympics has been built as one of the most important events in modern Chinese history to present the best possible image of China, and either through propaganda or actually voluntary participation this has been embraced by not only the Chinese in the People’s Republic of China but in cultural China and other areas. Certain form of patriotism, some people say maybe nationalism, are very strong, very strongly felt, especially when the press outside of China, Europe, and the US began to underscore negative features of China, and they become very worried about this real confrontation between two very different perceptions about what China is. Similarly, Dalai Lama in Chinese press and Dalai Lama in any other presses, including Japanese, are two radically different Dalai Lamas. One is totally a political figure with a great deal of ambition and capable of mobilizing all kinds of anti-Chinese forces. You can say it is anti-Sinitic. On the other hand, the Dalai Lama — even with many Chinese people they deeply understand his spirituality. He’s one of the most influential spiritual leaders in the world and certainly is a focus of Buddhist devotion. So these two images on the surface cannot be reconciled, but they function at different levels. If China begin to understand the Dalai Lama at a spiritual level and the Dalai Lama and his group become more sensitive to the Chinese worries at the political and economic levels, and some kind of understanding can be reached, my sense is the Dalai Lama’s understanding of the Chinese situation is much superior to the Chinese understanding of Tibetan culture and the role of Dalai Lama in the spiritual world, not just in Buddhism but in many other areas as well. The Dalai Lama is like the pope in the Buddhist tradition.

The perception from the Chinese side [is] the Dalai Lama is involved in the conspiracy against China. From the Dalai Lama’s side, China is developing a strategy to destroy Tibetan culture. My sense is it is not necessarily the case. Dalai Lama, so far as I can tell, really wants to have reconciliation. He hopes that he will be able to return to China, and as a spiritual leader that is his home. From the Chinese point of view, China certainly wants this tension and conflict to be reduced, and there is some desire, and maybe a strong desire with the more sensitive intellectuals, to become religiously more knowledgeable and more sensitive. So I think the conspiracy theory needs to be reexamined. The other one is extremely complicated, is the tension in Dharmsala between Dalai Lama’s perception of what ought to be done, and some of the young Tibetans who advocate independence, very hostile to the Chinese situation. I think they don’t mind some kind of riots happen in China. From the Chinese point of view, there are many, many Tibetans, they are already leaders probably in Tibet and other places, and they are in control, and they worry about any change because that would affect their personal interest and their power base. So the situation is complicated, not just Chinese and Tibetans, but Chinese and Chinese and Tibetans and Tibetans. That’s the reason why the more reasonable groups in China and reasonable groups in Tibet need to begin a serious not just dialogue, but a dialogue that leads to concrete action. Of course, the international community, those who are very much interested in human rights, in the cultivation of a cultural peace, and the importance of resolution of any conflict in the world, should take part in this joint venture. Of course, this is my wishful thinking, maybe highly idealized, but I think we need to enter this question not with an either-or approach, but both-and, to look at it as a complex issue to be resolved and to find a way of doing it. Any improvement is desirable. Any conflict will lead to further conflict and may lead to an irreversible process of violence. Both possibilities are there, and given the current situation, it’s so explosive I’m worried that the kind of option everybody, rational people, don’t want to see happen may even happen.

Q: You mentioned the Chinese government is religiously unmusical. Why is that? Is it because of communism?

A: I don’t think so. The issue is much more complicated and historically more significant. Ever since the May Fourth Movement in 1919, 30 years before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the ethos of the Chinese intellectuals, overwhelmed by aggressions from the outside, is to say wealth and power — these are the things if China wants to be integrated, wants to be respected, China will have to develop its economic base, its political system, even its military might. And that is so pervasive, that’s the basis of what we perceive as either patriotism or nationalism. Virtually all Chinese, when I talk to the dissidents, before they became dissidents, all of them were committed to this notion of national integration or sovereignty. Sometimes that [was] even considered superior to democratization, to the possibility of amicable relations between China and the rest of the world. So one thing, I feel very troubled if the people in China, under the leadership or the promotion of the government’s position, believe that sovereignty is at stake, they can sacrifice the Olympics. So that is the bottom line. If sovereignty is not at stake, and it’s a question of some kind of aggressive attitude towards China, because of China’s so-called peaceful rise, or peaceful development, those issues can be resolved.

Q: How has religion come into conflict with Chinese notions of sovereignty? Why has there been such a negative reaction toward religious groups?

A: Throughout Chinese history, often the government takes a kind of benign neglect, but once a religion became politicized, became a force for challenging the authority of the government, it happened also in China quite often — the so-called White Lotus group, the Taiping Rebellion, some rebellions motivated by Buddhism and so forth — the Chinese government became very determined to suppress these religious movements, so the nervousness about religion, especially foreign religions, especially religion that’s not part of the indigenous tradition, and especially the modernistic mentality — you know, many of the leaders in China are engineers and scientists, and some of the scientists really strongly believe, I think, an outmoded notion: that religion is superstition. Religion is sometimes identified with superstition, but I’m aware of the fact that many younger scholars with good training in religion now become advisors, so my recommendation is that even though United Front represents the political side of Beijing, the United Front will have to be advised, will have to be informed by these complicated not just religious but culture issues.

Q: Has there also been a rise in religious life in China, perhaps a search for spirituality after everything has been so material?

A: I think it is probably broader than that. Certainly recently the market economy may be very important for the accumulation of wealth and even reduction of poverty and so forth. There are many, many positive sides. But when the society becomes “marketized,” the market society or the marketization penetrates into all forms of human relatedness and the society is so transformed that younger people, I mean the younger people not only in the major cities of China but in Tibet as well, have become insensitive to the cultural resources, because their cultural tradition with very short memory is totally disconnected with the traditional culture, and that situation provide the ethos that is worrisome for all spiritual leaders. On the other hand, precisely because historically, meaning everything since the Opium War, especially May 4, 1919, the Chinese intellectuals were so much obsessed with modernization, modernism, scientism. That is the reason it’s difficult for the Tibetans.

Q: Currently in China is there more religious freedom? Less? The numbers of not only Buddhists but Christians and Muslims are supposedly on the rise.

A: Precisely. The religious activity have become more pervasive, sometimes more compelling, and the nervousness about religion also becomes greatly enhanced. So you can say there are more attempts to control, but at the same time no government, including Beijing, is able to control the situation. Because one religious sect has made the whole country nervous, the whole leadership nervous, so to try to learn about religion is also greatly pronounced as an urgent matter. In fact, the leadership in Beijing has made it very explicit: “We really have to understand religion.” But, of course, hopefully the religion that emerges in China will be part of the peaceful transformation, rather than major challenges. My sense is that religion is absolutely crucial for the 21st century, but at the same time religion can be both extremely positive and extremely negative, and I think the Chinese government is aware of it and yet how to really learn about it — not just the government but the intellectual community as a whole — is important. Twenty years ago, I talked about China’s need to take India as a reference, because if China does that then the forms of spirituality exhibited in India — they are so varied, so complicated — will be a major reference for China. This is beginning to happen, but slowly. Once China takes India seriously — it’s basically the software, the economic competitiveness, not enough about Indian spirituality.

Q: Does Confucianism play into the Chinese psyche?

A: Absolutely. I think the area we call Chinese culture area, maybe Confucian culture area, includes mainland China, Hong Kong, Tawain, Macau, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan — very large area, and in this area for years and years peaceful coexistence of religions turn out to be defining characteristic of the spiritual landscape of this area. China, we talk about three religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism. More recently, ever since the Ming Dynasty, 14-15th centuries, five religions: Islam and Christianity. Japan — three religions: Buddhism, Shintoism, and the Japanese understanding of Confucianism. And in Korea right now Christianity is very, very vibrant. But Confucianism persists in terms of the habits of the heart, so in Confucian world religious cooperation, religious coexistence is taken for granted, but Confucianism itself was totally marginalized, even deconstructed for the last three generations. So the ethos that emerges in China is totally obsessed with wealth and power, with scientism, with modernism, so they look up to Japan and the Western powers, especially recently the US, but not the more subtle religious traditions. You know, the US is one of the most religious countries in the modernized societies, much more than all the European countries, and China’s understanding of the US is basically market economy, military might, and political organization. I think that’s unfortunate. It’s very deeply rooted in the Chinese psyche, especially in the modern decades.

Q: Back to Tibet — what does its historical relationship with China have to say about the present situation?

A: Chinese history, of course, is long and complicated. If you look at the Manchu Empire from roughly 1644 to 1912, Tibet is an integral part of China, because the Manchu dynasty is linguistically plural, ethnically and religiously pluralistic. Four languages were used as official languages in the Manchu Empire: Manchu, Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan. So there’s no question about the fact that Tibet — of course the Dalai Lama system also emerged in that period. Now earlier, ever since the Tang dynasty, you can also see close relationship. You can say that Tibet has been for a long time very much part of the Chinese political sphere. This does not mean that Tibetan culture, Tibetan religion, Tibetan self-understanding has become an integral part of the Chinese psyche. In fact, for years and years Tibet as a culture believes that India is the father of spirituality, the source of inspiration, and China is a political protector. Recently, India still is a cultural resource, but China becomes an aggressive force against Tibet. So I think historically we make a distinction between a cultural history and the political history. Then we can see the interaction of these two civilizations in a complex way. There’s no reason why Tibet cannot be an integral part of China, as the Dalai Lama suggests, in an autonomous way. But since Dalai Lama’s understanding of Tibet is significantly different from the Chinese government’s understanding of Tibet, the conflict cannot be easily resolved. For the Dalai Lama, Tibet is a cultural idea, so it’s not in the Tibetan region. … From the Chinese perspective, Dalai Lama is claiming more than 20 percent of the Chinese territory as under his influence. This is unacceptable. But from the Dalai Lama’s point of view, what he wants to have is a peaceful existence, is to allow the Tibetans all over China to become equitable, to become possible preserving their own culture and developing their own styles of modernization. In fact, I believe this is not only doable, this is something that ought to happen — of course, again, from my wishful thinking. But there is a good possibility.

Q: What is it that the Chinese fear?

A: They are much more worried about the non-Chinese speaking Muslim communities, the so-called Uighurs. The Uighurs are so much a part of Central Asia now, with their own culture and ethnic identity. [It is] the so-called Eastern Turkestan issue. So China is worried about it, and understandably. Even Taiwan issue — the tension [is] greatly lowered. Again, it is something that can be very explosive.

Read more of the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly interview with Tu Weiming, professor of Chinese history and philosophy and Confucian studies at Harvard University./wnet/religionandethics/files/2008/06/thumb01-tuweiming.jpg

Buddhist teachings do not rule out the use of force to relieve a greater suffering, although the Buddhist tradition is rightly known for the systematic practice of nonviolence, its first ethical precept.

A concise summary of the texts authorizing the use of force may be found in Peter Harvey’s An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, where most examples are of killing a tyrant who is terrorizing the masses. Even here, however, the paradigm is of the Buddha, who famously stopped a serial killer in his tracks by the force of his goodness and then accepted the criminal (known as Angulimala for his signature “necklace of fingers”) into the monastic order.

The Tibetans are historically a bellicose people who have defended themselves with force throughout history. Monks have taken to the streets before, even in the 20th century. What follow is a summary of the Tibetan conflict with the Chinese in modern history.

The struggle for Tibet is perhaps the best known theater of engaged Buddhism in the early 21st century, due in part to the global activism of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, and the strong interest of the press and the public since 1959, when Chinese troops overran the country. Certainly the political, economic, cultural, and environmental carnage that resulted from Chinese annexation of the Tibetan region has been well documented (see recommended reading list).

Political instability is not new to Tibet, but it is arguably its defining characteristic since before the transmission of Buddhism to the region in the 7th century CE. Its provinces were not unified until the 17th century, when the first Dalai Lama consolidated the country under Manchu patronage. When the British invaded in 1904, the 13th Dalai Lama fled to Mongolia and attempted unsuccessfully to enlist Russian support. The Chinese recovered control of the country in 1909, but were expelled by the Dalai Lama in 1913.

Declaring independence in 1914, the 13th Dalai Lama attempted to institute political reforms but was opposed by the monasteries. After an uprising of monks in 1921, the Dalai Lama gave up all efforts to modernize the country; the army was disbanded, English schools closed, and regents took over the country following the Dalai Lama’s death in 1933. In 1947, armed monks of the Sera Je monastery took part in a rebellion that resulted in 300 deaths. Elements of the sangha (Buddhist clergy) called on China to liberate the country. The People’s Liberation Army entered the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, in 1951 and brokered a 12-point accord between Beijing and Lhasa. But in 1959 another uprising of monks triggered a crackdown that has placed the country firmly under Chinese control ever since. The 14th Dalai Lama, still a teenager, fled to India with the senior members of the government.

In 1966, the Chinese Cultural Revolution encompassed Tibet in the systematic destruction of all things Buddhist: clergy, monasteries, libraries, rituals, and artifacts. The Free Tibet Movement emerged in the Tibetan refugee camps in India in the 1970s, with the Tibetan Youth Congress and the Tibetan People’s Freedom Movement giving voice to the growing militancy of the exiles. In 1977, a group of young Tibetans held a hunger strike outside the United Nations Information Center in New Delhi, stating to the press, “We Tibetans are treated as political lepers by the international community and our cause as an embarrassing and contagious disease. We the victims are ignored and shunned while our oppressors are courted and feted by a world gone mad. We are peaceful people and we have nowhere to turn to for justice except the United Nations.”

In the three decades that followed, while unrest has simmered within the refugee communities in India and the West, the Dalai Lama has increasingly become an international icon of nonviolent resistance. His tools have been the lecture circuit and the printing press, not the streets that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. used to such advantage in the struggle for independence in India and civil rights in the United States. The Dalai Lama’s consistent rejection of military means is based on Buddhist principles, as is his deep conviction that political reform must be built on the interdependence of human goals and “a policy of kindness,” as he explained in his evening address to the Nobel Committee upon receiving the Peace Prize in 1989: “It is quite clear that everyone needs peace of mind. The question, then, is how to achieve it. Through anger we cannot; through kindness, through love, through compassion we can achieve one individual’s peace of mind. The result of this is a peaceful family….Extended to the national level, this attitude can bring unity, harmony, and cooperation with genuine motivation. On the international level, we need mutual trust, mutual respect, frank and friendly discussion with sincere motivation, and joint efforts to solve world problems. All these are possible. But first we must change within ourselves.”

Such a “ripple effect” of spiritual practice on social and political reality — His Holiness frequently describes to Western audiences how he rises at 4 a.m. each day to generate kindness toward the Chinese, “who are also subject to suffering, as the Buddha taught” — is recognized as a traditional principle in Buddhist social ethics and has become a touchstone for engaged Buddhists today. The slogan “Inner Peace, World Peace” has motivated individuals and organizations to enter the political arena on behalf of the Tibetan cause and many others.

Buddhist teachings do not rule out the use of force to relieve a greater suffering, although the Buddhist tradition is rightly known for the systematic practice of nonviolence, its first ethical precept./wnet/religionandethics/files/2008/06/thumb01-buddhist-ethics.jpg

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a special report today on the plight and paradox of Tibetan Buddhists. They teach nonviolence, but their demonstrations against the Chinese have sometimes become violent. How can they persuade the Chinese that they and the Dalai Lama are not a threat? Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Chinese authorities called these protesters in San Francisco “Tibetan hooligans” whose only purpose was to use violence to embarrass China in its moment of Olympic glory. Lhadon Tethong was there. She’s a Tibetan activist and leader of Students for a Free Tibet.

LHADON TETHONG (Students for a Free Tibet): There has to be tension. There has to be crisis. They have to feel the occupation is a problem for them whether they agree with us or not.

SEVERSON: The protests in San Francisco and around the world were mainly a reaction to demonstrations by Tibetan monks inside Tibet and China. The Chinese government mobilized troops. Many Tibetan monks and nuns were arrested when the initial demonstration began earlier this year in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The Chinese placed the blame squarely on the leader of some six million Tibetan Buddhists — the Dalai Lama. Columbia University professor of Buddhist studies Robert Thurman says the charge is simply not true.

Professor ROBERT THURMAN (Department of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University): The Chinese are desperate now to try to claim that the Dalai Lama caused all this upset, which of course he totally did not. He was totally upset.

SEVERSON: The work of the protesters is raising questions among Tibetans themselves and people around the world. For instance, will the demonstrations actually force the Chinese to loosen control of Tibetan Buddhism? And how can a religious philosophy built around peace and compassion continue to hold the high ground when the protests are resulting in so much violence? Professor Thurman says the Tibetan devotion to nonviolence goes to the core of their faith –the path to total enlightenment takes place over many, many lifetimes, many reincarnations, and to commit violence threatens that path.

Prof. THURMAN: My life is my own evolutionary moment to progress, and I’m not going to do violence. So therefore, to cherish your own life, you don’t want to risk it for some sort of worldly aim. You want to develop your soul because that’s what your life is for.

SEVERSON: But he says those who think protestors have violated the basic principle of nonviolence don’t understand the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy of self-defense.

Prof. THURMAN: Buddhist ethics is intense about nonviolence, but it’s also pragmatic. There is one sutra where it’s stated if you are invaded by an enemy and you can successfully defend yourself and repel the enemy, and the enemy while occupying you will cause tremendous violence, then you should defend yourself.

SEVERSON: Chinese history professor Tu Weiming of Harvard believes at least part of the problem stems from a lack of understanding by the Chinese leadership of Tibetan Buddhism and the role of the Dalai Lama.

Professor TU WEIMING (Harvard University): The Chinese government is not at all informed about the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader. They always perceive him as a political leader interested in mobilizing anti-Chinese forces outside of China. My sense is that it’s a misperception that needs to be corrected.

SEVERSON: If any Westerner ought to understand the role of the Dalai Lama among Tibetans, it is Robert Thurman. Before choosing to be a professor, Thurman became the first Western Tibetan Buddhist monk under the tutelage of the Dalai Lama. He says the Dalai Lama is to Buddhism what Jesus is to Christianity.

Prof. THURMAN: If Jesus was constantly coming back, how would Christians feel about that person? You can get an idea of how the Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhists feel about the Dalai Lama.

SEVERSON: But Chinese officials say the looting, the beatings, and destruction of property prove that the Tibetan people and their leader are hypocrites. The Chinese government maintains, and most of its citizens believe, that Tibet has always been a part of China. The Tibetans disagree saying their country didn’t become part of China until 1951 after it was forcefully occupied by Chinese troops. The Dalai Lama fled to his new home in exile in India in 1959.

Prof. THURMAN: For 30 years, from the ’50s to the end of Mao, they did the most violent thing. You can’t even believe it. They killed a million people. Half of it was famine craziness, and a lot of it was this class struggle thing, you know, “kill the landlords,” and political things and eradicating the religion. You couldn’t even have a rosary. You’d go to work camp prison for life.

SEVERSON: Chinese authorities dispute these charges and say China has lifted Tibet into the 21st century.

Prof. WEIMING: China believes that in the last few decades the government has contributed significantly to Tibetan growth in terms of economic growth, in terms of building roads and so forth.

SEVERSON: But many Tibetans say the Chinese government is systematically diluting their culture and religion while encouraging millions of Chinese to move here. The Dalai Lama has called it “cultural genocide.” The Chinese dispute the genocide charge and accuse the protesters of purely anti-Chinese activity. Many of today’s Chinese leaders come from engineering and science backgrounds. Professor Weiming says these leaders are most interested in generating wealth and modernization — that they have a deep skepticism of all religions especially if their leaders threaten authority.

Prof. WEIMING: Tibetans feel they are humiliated, they are ignored, they are marginalized because people don’t understand why they are so devoted to religion, to the Dalai Lama. Their devotion sometimes is wrongly perceived as a kind of superstition and that should be overcome by modernization.

SEVERSON: The Dalai Lama has always preached nonviolence and never demanded independence from China.

DALAI LAMA (during U.S. visit): The whole world knows the Dalai Lama not seeking independence. Our approach is not separation, within the People’s Republic of China for full guarantee about our unique culture and heritage including our language.

SEVERSON: Arjia Rinpoche was a highly positioned Lama in Tibet before he defected to the U.S. 10 years ago. He supports the Dalai Lama’s approach to peace.

ARJIA RINPOCHE (Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center): Most of Tibetans like His Holiness’ idea. You know, the Middle Way works.

SEVERSON: The Middle Way, however, meaning more autonomy and more freedom, is not the ultimate goal of young Tibetans. They want full independence, their leader the Dalai Lama notwithstanding.

LHADON TETHONG: He is like a parent, a senior elder, respected member of the family whom you love and whom I can also disagree at times when I hear him saying something politically that I might not necessarily agree with or like. But that doesn’t change the nature of how much I respect or how much I love him.

SEVERSON: They may love him, but young Tibetans are growing impatient with the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way, and he may be feeling the pressure.

DALAI LAMA (during U.S. visit): If things become out of control then my only option is completely resign.

SEVERSON: Professor Thurman says if Chinese leaders were willing to meet with the Dalai Lama in person, the conflict could be resolved.

Prof. THURMAN: If I can get him a room with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, it would have a profound impact actually on the world. They would turn around, I think.

Prof. WEIMING: I was deeply worried when I was in China that not just the government officials, but some intellectuals believe that if the Dalai Lama fades from the scene the problem will be resolved. If the Dalai Lama fades from the scene, the situation will be uncontrollable. I think the Chinese government should be critically aware of this.

SEVERSON: Even the most ardent followers of the Dalai Lama, like Arjia Rinpoche, appear to be losing hope that the Chinese government will come around.

Mr. RINPOCHE: When I escaped in 1998 then I thought, oh, in eight years I might return to home. Ten years, I’m pretty sure. So today is exactly the 10 years now. So the situation is getting worse.

SEVERSON: For now, there is little indication that the Chinese will relax control of Tibet. Many Tibetans are counting on the next and more informed generation of Chinese leaders to realize they are not a threat.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson reporting.

/wnet/religionandethics/files/2008/09/re_thumb_cover_buddhism.jpgThey teach nonviolence, but their demonstrations against the Chinese have sometimes become violent.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Last weekend, Tibetan Buddhists celebrated their New Year, called Losar, with traditional services of prayer and purification, sending positive energy into the world, they hope, to help bring about peace. We visited the Tibetan Meditation Center in Frederick, Maryland, where Kalden Lodoe was our guide.

I wish that all Tibetans would actually keep on celebrating this Losar in a traditional way. Now that it’s Losar — my son’s third Losar; he’s three years old — my biggest concern is, what happens when my son grows up into my age and the values, culture, and religion become even thinner?

Spiritually speaking, I think it is a time to reinforce the resolutions that you have made to become a better person.

Prostration is a physical activity to accumulate positive energy, which would be restored in our consciousness. When there are more positives, automatically the negatives will be reduced and, finally, one can become a totally awakened buddha.

And, by reciting mantra, one can invoke a mind of a deity. We try to become closer to the reality of who we are — the buddhahood or the full enlightenment. Usually, we use the mala or rosary to count the mantras that we recite.

In Buddhism, in order to purify the world and find true peace, peace must begin with yourself. In order to find inner peace within ourself, we engage in purification practices.

New prayer flags are put up on special occasions like New Year or when there’s a new beginning.

We have five different colors of prayer flags. Mantras and sutras and prayers written on the prayer flags would activate special energy and would be carried throughout the world by air and wind.

We consider old prayer flags sacred, and we wouldn’t just throw it on the ground. And therefore we burn the prayer flags so that it’ll become ash. With the smoke it will carry the blessings.

Coming here, doing it all together provides an opportunity for the Tibetans to celebrate this in a spiritual way with their family and pass on the tradition to a new generation.

Tibetan Buddhists celebrated their New Year, called Losar, with traditional services of prayer and purification, sending positive energy into the world, they hope, to help bring about peace./wnet/religionandethics/files/2011/01/thumb01-losar.jpg

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, Part Two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.” How can the Tibetan refugees preserve the prayer wheels and mandalas of their culture and pass on those traditions to a new generation increasingly influenced by the West? And can the Tibetan Buddhists in exile really expect someday to go home? Our correspondent is Lucky Severson.

LUCKY SEVERSON: A Tibetan monk calling the faithful to an evening session of prayer and meditation under the gaze of the majestic Himalayas. But this is not Tibet. It’s a remote corner of neighboring India where the Tibetan people, headed by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, are putting down roots, albeit shallow roots, in the hope of one day returning to their homeland.

The tranquility of these re-created sacred spaces is in sharp contrast to the noise and jumble of Tibetan commerce on the other side of town, a dusty hillside village called Dharamsala.

Dharamsala is more than just a refuge for all the Tibetans who make the dangerous journey across the Himalayas to escape Chinese oppression. It’s a place where dreams and memories come together. There is a sense of urgency and purpose here, to hang on tight to the past, get ready for the future, wherever that might be.

Jeremy Russell is a writer who has lived in Dharamsala for 20 years.

Mr. JEREMY RUSSELL (Writer): It’s easy to forget that when they came out of Tibet, they had nothing. They just had what they carried out with them.

SEVERSON: It was 1959. After nine years of brutal Chinese occupation, the 14th Dalai Lama, fearing for his life, escaped to India, where he was given refuge in a backwater dead end in the foothills of the Himalayas, the wrong side of the Himalayas, but nonetheless a home.

Tibetan refugees still arrive almost every day, desperate to get away from the starkly beautiful land they love, but a land now unbearable to them under Chinese rule. Jamyang Norbu is a Tibetan writer and scholar.

Mr. JAMYANG NORBU (Tibetan Scholar and Writer): People there with binoculars and telescopes, watching everyone passing up and down. So it is really, really tightly controlled as far as security is concerned.

SEVERSON: Over a million Tibetans killed by the Chinese, 6,000 monasteries destroyed, secret police everywhere. But in recent years, the methods are less brutal, more sophisticated. The Chinese are diluting the culture, flooding Tibet with 7.5 million Chinese compared to 6 million Tibetans.

Mr. NORBU: They’ve created a totally materialistic culture. You have discotheques; you have karaoke bars.

SEVERSON: Even the Dalai Lama, who has always treated China with what his followers call a kind heart, says whether it is deliberate or not, the Chinese are destroying the Tibetan culture.

SEVERSON: Dharamsala has become the cultural heart and political nerve center of the Tibetan people. The government in exile has established many ministries and a parliament.

Mr. RUSSELL: Their identity’s under threat. They’re — the people who are here in exile are very aware that if they don’t preserve the traditions that have been handed down to them, then they’re going to be lost.

SEVERSON: Here at the Norbulingka Institute, young artists are learning old art forms no longer taught in Tibet. When this statue of the Tibetan Buddhist deity Kalachakra is completed, it will appear at a Tibetan center in New York. Preserving the past is one thing; living in the past is another.

Mr. NORBU: I totally disagree with the whole Tibetan establishment of preserving culture. I don’t want it to be preserved so that, you know, like, in the future, anthropologists and western visitors come here and see us in our reservation doing our rain dance. I want Tibetan culture to continue into the past but, at the same time, being able to be — to operate in the 21st century.

SEVERSON: The monasteries and nunneries here do teach ancient traditions like creating sand mandalas, but the nuns can also pursue a higher education to achieve status equal to a monk, something impossible in Tibet.

In Tibet, schoolchildren learn Chinese and Chinese history, but here they receive a traditional Tibetan Buddhist education. The children learn not only their history, but skills for their future.

NIMA: The way I came from Tibet place is a very small village, and it doesn’t know about the Chinese and Dalai Lama and the history of Tibet, since they are really uneducated people. And so I wanted to educate them if I can.

SEVERSON: Like many of the 2,500 kids at the Tibetan Children’s Center, Nima’s family is still back in Tibet. For these kids, going home is an obsession. They are part of a new activist generation determined to make their voices heard.

(Reading) “We are writing this petition to you. The present situation in Tibet is such that we can’t go back to our place of birth, our home.”

They are running out of patience. Young people are also growing up in a western culture, out of the isolation of Tibet. They wear jeans, hang out at the five cybercafes in Dharamsala, and mingle with westerners. Is it possible that the West is corrupting a culture already under attack?

When the Dalai Lama came here, he built less ornate monasteries and vowed to make the rituals more personal and private, but that’s been difficult, partly because of the intense western interest and influence.

Mr. NORBU: Sometimes our teachers seem to be aiming their discourse to the West and to the West in a sense of, let’s say — let me stereotype it — to, let’s say, California.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I mean, it doesn’t feel like India at all. It feels like a completely different country. But it’s nice. It feels like Berkeley, actually.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Yes.

SEVERSON: Feels like what?

WOMAN #1: Like Berkeley.

SEVERSON: The older Tibetans still practice their religion in private and sometimes in the street. The younger ones seem more interested in more temporal things, for now, anyway.

Mr. NORBU: The real problem is right now, because of the demands made by western Buddhists on our society, Tibetan lamas have lit — very little time to preach to their own people. Younger children, especially teenagers, are not getting religious instruction.

SEVERSON: So on one hand, the Tibetans here are spinning their prayer wheels and dreaming of home. The old Tibet exists only in memories. The new Tibet is Chinese. What happens when and if the Tibetans in exile get a chance to go home? So much has changed on this and the other side of the Himalayas in the last 40 years.

ABERNETHY: Lucky, it was a wonderful report. Talking to the Dalai Lama, I know he tells you that he’s going back to Tibet in his lifetime. Could you believe him?

SEVERSON: I’d have a difficult time not believing anything he said, but I don’t understand how it can happen in his lifetime. There’s simply no incentive for the Chinese to give up Tibet.

ABERNETHY: Even if they did go back, what would that mean for Tibetan Buddhism?

SEVERSON: I think that it’s in question, because Tibetan Buddhism, particularly from within Tibet, has changed so much under Chinese rule. I just don’t see how it — if it happens, it’s not going to be easy; it’s going to be very, very difficult.

ABERNETHY: Lucky, many thanks.

SEVERSON: Thank you.

Part two of our series on the Tibetan Buddhists in exile in India. They’re refugees not only from Chinese oppression in Tibet but also from what the Dalai Lama calls “cultural genocide.”/wnet/religionandethics/files/1999/06/tibetans-exile-thumb.jpg

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world’s foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those who are destroying his country? What does he think about when he meditates for five hours every morning?

RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY was invited to interview the Dalai Lama at his exile home in Dharamsala, India. Our correspondent Lucky Severson brought back this exclusive report on His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Carved out of a mountainside in the hazy foothills of the Himalayas, this is Dharamsala, India. Most of the faces you see in Dharamsala are Tibetan, and they are here because this is the home of their exiled spiritual and political leader — some say he is a god-king — the 14th Dalai Lama.

If I stop you or interrupt you to ask you a question, will you get angry with me?

DALAI LAMA: Oh, perhaps.

SEVERSON: Oh, no.

DALAI LAMA: Beat it.

SEVERSON: Then I won’t interrupt.

For a man with the weight of his oppressed people resting squarely on his shoulders, his eyes sparkle, his curiosity consumes, and he laughs easily, a huge, contagious laugh impossible to resist.

(to Dalai Lama): People who meet you are always amazed that you enjoy life so much. You savor every moment like a fine wine. How do you do that?

DALAI LAMA: My mental state, I think, and hopefully at a comparatively more peaceful, I think. Inside, you see, different situation, some sad sort of frustrations. But it never remain long. This is something like the ocean. On the surface, the wave comes and go, comes and go, but underneath always remains calm.

SEVERSON: A fitting description of a man whose name, Dalai Lama, translated, means “ocean of wisdom,” a man millions of Buddhists believe to be the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, who died in 1933. After his death, the monks of Tibet began a long search for the 14th Dalai Lama. Following heavenly signs along the way, they found a two-year-old Tibetan boy who instantly grabbed the string of prayer beads owned by the Dalai Lama number 13. The boy was Lhamo Thondup, and he passed a critical test when he selected from a large group of objects only those that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama.

I’ve been told that you are the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. You are the 14th. If you’re the Dalai Lama now, how can you top that in the next life?

DALAI LAMA: This question — I don’t know how to answer. From the Buddhist view, your questions are not very smart.

SEVERSON: From the Buddhist view, the answer is the 14th Dalai Lama will be reincarnated as the 15th Dalai Lama.

Mr. JAMYANG NORBU (Tibetan Scholar and Writer): The institution of the Dalai Lama is also a creation of the Tibetan people’s genius, their religious genius.

SEVERSON: Jamyang Norbu is a Tibetan scholar and a writer whose family has served the Dalai Lama for generations.

Mr. NORBU: So it’s not like he has a choice in a lot of matters here. So sometimes I think he finds it very frustrating, maybe even limiting in a sense.

SEVERSON: Do you ever get lonely?

DALAI LAMA: No.

SEVERSON: Never?

DALAI LAMA: No. When, of course, when I was young.

SEVERSON: When he was a little boy with no time to grow up and no friends, traveling with an entourage of hundreds, a prisoner of the status.

DALAI LAMA: Sometimes feeling, “Oh, the Dalai Lama’s way of life is boring.” As a grown-up, I realize my own responsibility or rule.

SEVERSON: When he was 15, while the West looked the other way, Chinese Communists invaded the world’s only theocracy, ultimately destroying 6,000 monasteries and slaughtering as many as a million Tibetans. Finally in 1959, his life in great danger, the Dalai Lama escaped to India. Forty years later, his life is not what it would have been. His followers, in addition to the six million Tibetans, now include millions of people around the world. His influence is larger than life.

Some people have described you as a god-king. Forgive me, but what are you?

DALAI LAMA: I’m just a human being, a Buddhist monk, just a human being. I think a happy human being, perhaps.

SEVERSON: Just a human being, perhaps, but look in the eyes of those who have come here to get a glimpse of the man. He always seems a bit embarrassed by the attention, as if to say, “Hey, I’m just one of you.” But he is most comfortable when he is doing what he does hours every day, usually alone, chanting and meditating.

What do you do when you get up at 3:30?

DALAI LAMA: I sleep. (Laughter) Meditation.

SEVERSON: Meditation.

DALAI LAMA: Meditation. Sometimes meditation with a little sleep. Otherwise, from 3:30 and around 8:30 or 9.

DALAI LAMA: Analyze what thought or emotion is beneficial, what is harmful. Analyze clearly, then find out the contradictions among these different kinds of emotions or thoughts. Then once we realize now this emotion, such as hatred, is very bad, very harmful, very harmful for health, very harmful for mental peace and also is harmful to the society. Then find out what is opposite or thought: love, love and kindness, compassion.

SEVERSON: It is a spiritual philosophy that has beckoned to millions of Americans and westerners.

Are you looking for converts in the West and America?

DALAI LAMA: No, never. That’s a mistake. I have firm belief the people like westerners, like Americans, you have Judeo-Christian traditions. So generally, you, your people, should keep your own traditions, should not change your faith.

SEVERSON: Is it possible for me to be a good Christian and still be a good Buddhist?

DALAI LAMA: Now already I’ve found to some of my Christian brothers, sisters, you see, very good Christian, very faithful to the concept of creator, but at the same time, taking some Buddhist methods or Buddhist technique either to increase the spiritual forgiveness or the tolerance and compassion.

SEVERSON: Even though casual Buddhism can complement Christianity, His Holiness says at the core, there is a fundamental difference.

DALAI LAMA: If you reach some higher spiritual experience, spiritual state, then I think it is difficult. The Buddhist concept — everything comes and happen due to law of causality: cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. This indicates there’s no central, absolute cause or creator. So since Buddhism do not have a concept of creator, some scholars say Buddhism is not a religion, but science of mind. So Buddhism also kind of atheism.

You see, you unify or mixed both, then difficult. Sooner or later, clash.

SEVERSON: For the people who come here — and they arrive by the hundreds — the Dalai Lama himself is reason enough to keep the faith. Many are Tibetans who have made the treacherous journey across the Himalayas to escape Chinese oppression. It is a painful reminder of his burden to free his people and get his country back.

He is a king without a country, the holy man locked away from most of his people. Here in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama has heard the firsthand reports of oppression, imprisonment, and the cultural genocide of his people. But throughout it all, he has steadfastly preached compassion and nonviolence.

Instead of fighting with the Chinese, he has spent most of his life negotiating, compromising, telling his people to be patient; their time will come. But it is a message that is wearing thin.

Mr. NORBU: The Chinese — they don’t have to listen to him at all. And these are people who are playing hardball. And in that sense, I feel sometimes that His Holiness is out of his depth there.

DALAI LAMA: My middle approach is strict nonviolent principles, although immediate result or effect on the Chinese government level so far is no result, no effect.

Mr. NORBU: I think a person who is at the moment — who by his own admission is tremendously confused, who is tremendously frustrated by the lack of any kind of response from the Chinese to his overtures, and a person who, in a sense, who feels he has failed.

SEVERSON: These are pictures of a man who burned himself to death last year to protest the Chinese occupation, and the man has become a martyr and a symbol that young Tibetans in particular are growing impatient.

The Tibetan Youth Congress, calling itself the loyal opposition, is drawing a line. Doma Chopel, a spokesperson for the Tibetan Youth Congress.

Ms. DOMA CHOPEL (Tibetan Youth Congress Spokesperson): Do you know, whatever we have done, we tried and we did in a nonviolent path. But we don’t know what the people demands, like if a time demands then maybe Tibetan people’s ready to sacrifice, they die for their own fatherland.

SEVERSON: But the way His Holiness has analyzed the situation, violence would only bring violence, even a bloodbath. Violence and hatred, he says, are what is wrong with nations and families in this modern world.

DALAI LAMA: I see many tragic situations which we are facing today at an international level or a national level, family level. I feel that we are in generally, among humanity, in modern time, we are lacking peace of mind. We need human values. Unhappy person, if utilized these inner value, can be happy person. The troubled family can be peaceful family. Not through money, not through other means.

SEVERSON: The 63-year-old Dalai Lama is convinced that he will return to the Potala Palace in Tibet in this lifetime. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Dharamsala, India.

Our special report on the life, the plight, and the humor of the Dalai Lama. Forced out of Tibet by the Chinese in 1959, living in exile with little apparent chance of returning, the Dalai Lama remains one of the world’s foremost symbols of hope and nonviolence. How does he keep from hating those who are destroying his country?/wnet/religionandethics/files/1999/06/dalailama-thumb.jpg

BOB ABERNETHY: The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of six million Tibetan Buddhists, is touring the U.S. this week, trying to rally support for freedom for his homeland, taken over by China 40 years ago. His visit comes at a time of growing frustration among his people. He preaches compassion, even for Tibet’s Chinese rulers, but some of his followers wonder if his methods can work. Jeff Sheler of U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT looks at the Dalai Lama and his dilemma. A warning, some of the footage in this story is disturbing.

JEFF SHELER: He is known as the Ocean of Mercy, Holder of the White Lotus, and protector of the Land of Snows. His followers believe he is the incarnation of a Buddhist god. The Dalai Lama was just 15 years old when the Communist Chinese, under Mao Tse-tung, invaded Tibet, burned its monasteries, and slaughtered upwards of a million of its people. The young Dalai Lama fled to India and set up an exile community for more than 100,000 Tibetans. From there he has led a tireless international crusade for Tibet’s freedom, a crusade unflinching in its commitment to the Buddhist principles of peace, compassion, and nonviolence.

DALAI LAMA: Since our goal is to try to create a zone of peace and try to preserve the culture and spirituality while we carry on the struggle, we should give compassion as our source of strength. That is very important.

SHELER: While opposing violence and confrontation, the Dalai Lama calls for a middle way: dialogue with Beijing as the route for autonomy for his Himalayan homeland.

Professor JEFFREY HOPKINS (Tibetan Buddhist Studies, University of Virginia): He’s been open to forgiveness, open to change, and indeed, it must be frustrating that he has been so open to this for so many years and has received so little of response in return from the Chinese Communist government.

SHELER: Now this lack of response is testing the faith of some of his followers, who, while still revering the Dalai Lama, are growing impatient with his nonconfrontational approach.

PSNANG TENZIN (Protester): At this point, most Tibetans, especially young Tibetans, are really confused — what we really should be doing. On one side we have His Holiness talking about nonviolence, which is not taking us anywhere, so the choice is for us to be violent now.

SHELER: For the first time in this 40-year struggle, protests are going beyond mere picketing. Some Tibetans are waging hunger strikes. One protester in India died recently after setting himself on fire, all in hopes of forcing a response from the Chinese government.

The Dalai Lama himself tells RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY that the Tibetan struggle is at a critical and volatile juncture.

DALAI LAMA: The situation inside Tibet is becoming worse and worse. So naturally, more and more people are feeling some kind of frustration. My attitude about these activities, I consider harming oneself also a kind of violence. So I do not agree. These poor people are actually motivated to help the Dalai Lama, to help me, but perhaps with the wrong method. So in order to stop these dramatic actions, I have to offer — I should have one other alternative — that is unfortunately not there. So my position is rather difficult. I myself face some sort of dilemma. What to do with these people?

SHELER: His dilemma — how to keep a political movement alive without sacrificing spiritual principles? For the world’s leading Buddhist, there is no separating the spiritual and the temporal, and the only route to political progress is the way of peace and compassion.

Abbot KONCHO PASSANG (Abbot, Drepung Loseling Monastery, India): From the Tibetan viewpoint, we say that whatever His Holiness the Dalai Lama engages in, it is completely related to his own spiritual practice.

Prof. HOPKINS: Rather than resorting to power politics, he makes decisions based on concern for others.

SHELER: To face suffering with compassion is at the core of Tibetan Buddhist belief. It is a discipline the 14th Dalai Lama learned from his earliest days. He was a precocious child when Tibetan monks designated him the successor to the Lion’s throne. Installed at age four, he began 18 years of monastic study, but it was the Chinese invasion and his own exile as much as his Buddhist discipline that shaped the course of his life. As he consorts with the powerful to promote his cause, his concern for the lowly continues to amaze.

Professor ROBERT THURMAN (Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University): He goes to the White House, and he is every bit as interested in and greets with as much warmth the bodyguards and the janitors and the cooks, as he does these, like, puffed-up officials.

SHELER: The Dalai Lama has been so successful in calling attention to his people and their cause that he’s become something of a pop culture icon, from Hollywood to Madison Avenue. Some Tibetans worry that their struggle and their faith may be trivialized as a result. That’s just one of the challenges the Dalai Lama will continue to face as he seeks to balance his conflicting roles.

Prof. THURMAN: He shows us our great danger is to be cynical and apathetic. To have someone who maintains a positive, optimistic outlook indicates to us that it is always possible to improve. It’s always possible to save a situation.

SHELER: That may be the ultimate challenge for this smiling and serene man — whether he can hold a people together and keep them on the spiritual path and be effective in a world of power politics. This is Jeff Sheler reporting.

The Dalai Lama was just 15 years old when the Communist Chinese invaded Tibet, burned its monasteries, and slaughtered upwards of a million of its people. Now, he is the spiritual leader of six million Tibetan Buddhists is and is trying to rally support for freedom for his homeland. He preaches compassion, but some of his followers wonder if his methods can work./wnet/religionandethics/files/2013/03/07-2001.jpg